Atheists and the supernatural.

A rather misleading title, I assure you.
In truth, all technology so advanced as to be unrecognizable as technology is traditionally labeled supernatural.
My phone is something off of Star Trek, my coffee maker from Hogwarts, and this laptop has a magical touch screen that I swear can read my moods and freeze up accordingly.
It is supernatural to me. I cannot see this technology exist in nature. My brain cannot fathom that the little parts inside these machines were mined from the ground or chopped from a forest. It does not recognizably come from nature, therefore it is supernatural.

The human body, the environment around us, and even the particles that make up our being were once attributed to spirits, the will of the gods and a thousand other fairy tales. As science progressed, this plane of imagination grew ever smaller. Things that held mystery and studious lore have eventually faded into the boring textbooks of school children, medical students and hungover college kids.

Science have always had hints of things to come.
Daniel Rutherford knew that there were 'other kinds of air' as he trapped mice under glass jars and burned away their oxygen with a candle flame. He had no name, no word for this tasteless, odorless, invisible gas, but he knew something existed.
In 1683, an entirely new dimension was opened up before the eyes of Antony Van Leeuwenhoek. He used a window to observe for the first time...bacteria. Invisible. Tasteless. Odorless, but none the less powerful enough to effect life and death over the entire planet.
How many more such discoveries await us?
How many other dimensions, invisible variables and life altering impacts are in the future.
I cannot believe that technology has fulfilled it's development, or that we even know what is left to discover.

Without divine guidance, we accept that our lives are a blip on the radar of eternity.
Much like the theory of 'other gasses' our theories of 'other dimensions' or 'other universes' might well be common knowledge some day.
The supernatural might well become the unfathomably but none the less incredibly natural in a few generations.

As atheists we do not believe in a god. As people, some of us suspect that there is something more...something having nothing whatsoever to do with Heaven, Hell, Mt. Olympus or Nevernever.
Perhaps you've seen hints of it, and like antique coal miners, hope to cage a canary for further investigation.

Until science proves to me that there is something 'other' I take all assumptions and guesses (even my own) with skepticism. After all, the greatest doctors of their day once were certain that ill health came from an imbalance of humours.

Please don't let that keep you from sharing, however.
Who would have thought that the real reason was tiny little 'animalcules' running around in our bodies?

Replies to This Discussion

Atheism in its purest form requires only one thing - a lack of belief in God. As some of the books I've read have indicated, that lack of belief can be due to many things. Although most of us on TA have that lack of belief due to "rational rejection" some atheists [esp. in non-westernized parts of the world] are atheists for entirely different reasons. Many of these people do not call themselves "atheists" but they qualify as such by default. A person can be an atheist by default if their culture has no knowledge or concept of "god." - They lack a belief in God, and thus are atheistic. However, it seems to be more complicated than most ppl think [life usually is *groan*]. The raw definition of athiest says NOTHING about other forms of supernatural activity [spirits, ghosts, witchcraft, magic, psychic phenomena, etc.] - so THEORETICALLY someone could be an atheist and believe in one of these. If you are an atheist by default and it has nothing to do with "rational rejection" that is perfectly fine and understandable... as these ppl aren't free-thinkers, they just don't know about God. However! If you are [and most of us on this site are] an atheist due to "rational rejection of God" then if you believe in the supernatural at all... are you not being hypocritical? Are you not contradicting yourself? I do not think that a free-thinker atheist can dismiss one supernatural theory on the basis of reason and reject reason in favor of another. What about you guys?

However, Misty, You did make a good point. - What is considered supernatural in history, usually becomes "natural" through time... and eventually is taken for granted.